History of africa
The history of Africa refers to the set of events related to the human population of the African continent, from the origins of human beings to the present day.
The prehistory of Africa begins with the emergence of the first hominids about five million years ago, so the prehistoric period in Africa includes events much older than the history of the other human-populated continents; much later.
The proper historical period of the Ancient Ages in Africa includes the emergence of the Egyptian civilization, the subsequent development of societies outside the Nile Valley, and the interaction between them and civilizations outside Africa. At the end of the 7th century, North and East Africa were strongly influenced by the spread of Islam, leading to the appearance of new cultures, such as the Swahili peoples. This also increased the (previously existing) slave trade that would formally culminate in the 19th century. Pre-colonial African history focuses on the period from the beginning of the 16th century, characterized by the transfer of large numbers of African settlers as slaves to the New World, until the beginning of the European dispute over Africa. The African colonial period ran from the late 1800s until the advent of independence movements in 1951 when Libya became the first African colony to gain its independence. Modern African history has been plagued by revolutions and wars, however, also counting on the growth of the economies of some African nations throughout the continent.
African history has been a challenge for scholars given the paucity of written sources in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and also because of contrasting views on what is and is not African. Some study techniques such as the recording of oral history, archaeology, linguistic paleontology and genetics - to trace the movement of peoples - have been crucial when writing the history of several African regions that in the past had been a mystery.
Prehistory
According to the latest paleontological and archaeological explorations, hominids already existed in Africa at least 5 million years ago. Their skull anatomy was similar to that of their close relatives, the African great apes, but they had adopted a bipedal form of locomotion, which gave them a crucial advantage, allowing them to live both in forested areas and on savannah in one it was the one in which Africa was becoming arid, with the savannahs overlapping the forests and jungles.
About 3 million years ago several species of hominids of the genus Australopithecus had emerged throughout southern, eastern, and central Africa. The next great evolutionary step occurred approximately 2 million years ago with the arrival of Homo habilis, which is believed to be the first hominid species capable of making tools. This allowed H. habilis start eating meat. On the hunt, H. habilis was not able to compete with large predators, and was still more prey than hunter, although it was probably able to steal eggs from nests and may have been able to take small animals.
1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus appeared for the first time in Africa, although it did so almost simultaneously in the Caucasus (Eastern Europe). Some of the earliest representatives of this species still had rather small brains and used primitive rock tools, much like H. enable. His brain later grew and H. erectus ended up developing a more complex, Acheulean-type tool technology. They were possibly the first great hunters. Furthermore, Homo erectus mastered the art of producing fire, and was the first hominid to leave Africa, spreading throughout the Old World. It has also been suggested that Homo georgicus, a descendant of Homo habilis, may have been the first and most primitive hominid to live outside of Africa. However, many scientists consider Homo georgicus to be an earlier and more primitive member of the species Homo erectus.
The fossil record shows that Homo sapiens may have lived in southern and eastern Africa at least 100,000 and possibly 150,000 years ago. About 40,000 years ago, the colonization of our planet by modern humans began with their expansion out of Africa. Their migration is indicated by linguistic, cultural, and genetic evidence.
By the end of the Ice Age (circa 10,500 BC), the Sahara had again become a fertile valley, and its African population returned from the interior of the continent and from the coastal mountains in Africa subsaharan. However, the increasingly dry and warm climate meant that by 5000 B.C. C. the Sahara region was becoming increasingly arid. The population moved out of the area towards the Nile Valley, where they created permanent or semi-permanent settlements. A major climatic recession occurred, easing persistent heavy rains in central and eastern Africa; since then dry conditions have prevailed in East Africa.
Prehistoric cultures
The international phenomenon known as the Beaker culture began to affect North West Africa. Named for the characteristically shaped ceramic vessels found in tombs, the Beaker culture is associated with the rise of a warrior mentality. Rock art from this period in North Africa depicts animals but also places a new emphasis on the human figure, equipped with weapons and ornaments. People from the Great Lakes region of Africa settled along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea to become the Proto-Canaanites, who dominated the lowlands between the Jordan River, the Mediterranean, and the Sinai Desert.
North
Neolithic rock carvings, known as petroglyphs, and megaliths in Libya's Sahara desert attest to the early hunter-gatherer culture established on the dry grasslands of North Africa during the Ice Age. The region where the Sahara now lies was originally a good site for agriculture (circa 4000 BC). However, after the desertification of the Sahara, settlement in North Africa was concentrated in the Nile Valley, where the nomes of Egypt laid the foundation for Ancient Egyptian culture. Archaeological finds show that primitive tribes lived along the Nile long before the dynastic history of the pharaohs began. For the year 6000 a. C. organized agriculture had appeared.
The oldest evidence of written history in Africa comes from Ancient Egypt, and the Egyptian calendar continues to be used as the standard for dating the Bronze Age and Iron Age cultures in the region.
About 3100 B.C. C. Egypt was unified under the first known pharaoh, Narmer, who inaugurated the first of the 31 dynasties into which the history of Ancient Egypt is divided, which are grouped into three phases: Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom. The Pyramids of Giza (near Cairo), built during the fourth dynasty, attest to the power of pharaonic religion and rule. The Great Pyramid, which is the tomb of Pharaoh Cheops (also known as Khufu), is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the World that is still standing. Ancient Egypt reached its maximum power, wealth, and territorial extent in the New Kingdom period (1567-1085 B.C.).
The importance of Ancient Egypt in the development of the rest of Africa has been debated. Ancient Western scholars generally viewed Egypt as a Mediterranean civilization with little impact on the rest of Africa. Recent studies, however, have begun to discredit this notion. Some have argued that a number of ancient Egyptians, such as the Badarians, probably migrated north from Nubia, while others speak of a far-reaching movement of peoples across the Sahara before the onset of desertification. Whatever the origin of any people or civilization, it seems reasonably certain that the predynastic communities of the Nile Valley were essentially indigenous in their culture, receiving little influence from sources outside the mainland for several centuries directly preceding the beginning of historical times..
Just before the desertification of the Sahara, the communities that developed south of Egypt, in what is now Sudan, were full participants in the Neolithic Revolution and had a sedentary lifestyle, being able to domesticate plants and animals Some megaliths found at Nabta Playa are examples of what were probably the world's earliest archaeoastronomical instruments, some 1,000 years older than Stonehenge. This complexity, as observed at Natba Beach and expressed by different levels of authority within the local society, possibly laid the foundation for the structure of both Neolithic society at Nabta Beach and the Old Kingdom of Egypt. called "Group A", who inhabited present-day northern Sudan and were contemporaries of the pre-dynastic Naqada in Upper Egypt, were responsible for what may have been one of the oldest known kingdoms in the Nile Valley, which the Egyptians call Ta-seti (Land of the Bow). Its demise with the rise of dynastic Egypt later allowed for the rise of kingdoms such as Kush, Kerma, and Meroe, which together comprised what is sometimes called Nubia. The last of these would see their final devastating blow dealt by the leader of a growing kingdom in Ethiopia, Ezana of Aksum, effectively bringing the Classical Nubian civilizations to an end.
Separated by the "sea of sand" —the Sahara—, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa have been connected by fluctuating trans-Saharan trade routes. The Phoenician, Greek and Roman histories in North Africa can be followed through texts about the Roman Empire and its provinces in the Maghreb, such as Mauritania, Africa, Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, Egypt, etc.
The regions around the Mediterranean were settled and settled by the Phoenicians before 1000 B.C. C. Carthage, founded around the year 814 a. C., grew rapidly to become a city without rivals in the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians subdued the Berber tribes, which made up the majority of the local population, becoming the dominators of the entire habitable region in North Africa, and finding in trade a source of immense prosperity.
For the first millennium BC. BCE, iron working had been introduced to North Africa and quickly began to spread across the Sahara into the northern regions of sub-Saharan Africa, and by 500 BCE. C., metallurgy began to become common in West Africa, possibly after being introduced by the Carthaginians. Iron working was fully established around 500 B.C. C. in areas of eastern and western Africa, despite the fact that in other regions this activity did not begin to be carried out until the first centuries of our era. Some copper objects originating from Egypt, North Africa, Nubia and Ethiopia have been found in West Africa, dating to around 500 BCE. C., suggesting that commercial networks had already been established at that time.
The Greeks founded the city of Cyrene in ancient Libya around 631 B.C. C. Cyrenaica became a flourishing colony, although being completely surrounded by desert it had little or no influence on the interior of Africa. The Greeks, however, exerted a strong influence on Egypt. The city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. C., and under the Hellenistic dynasty of the Ptolemaics attempts were made to penetrate to the south, and in this way some knowledge of Ethiopia was obtained.
Between 500 B.C. C. and 500 AD. C. approximately, the civilization of the Garamantes (possibly the ancestors of the Tuareg) existed in what is now the Libyan desert.
All three powers—Cyrenaica, Egypt, and Carthage—would end up being displaced by the Romans. After centuries of rivalry with Rome, Carthage would finally fall in 146 B.C. C. Within just over a century Egypt and Cyrene were incorporated into the Roman Empire. Under Roman rule, the populated portions of the region were very prosperous. Despite the fact that Fezzan was occupied by them, the Romans found an impenetrable barrier in the rest of the Sahara. Nubia and Ethiopia were reached, but an expedition sent by Nero to discover the source of the Nile failed. The greatest extent of Mediterranean geographical knowledge of the African continent is shown in the writings of Ptolemy (2nd century), who knew or intuited the existence of the great aquiferous reserves of the Nile, of trading posts along the coasts of the Indian Ocean in places as far south as Rhapta—in present-day Tanzania—and had heard of the Niger River.
The interaction between Asia, Europe and North Africa during this period was significant. Some important effects include the spread of classical culture around the shores of the Mediterranean; the continuing struggle between Rome and the Berber tribes; the introduction of Christianity throughout the region, and the cultural effects of the churches in Tunisia, Egypt and Ethiopia. The classical era came to an end with the invasion and conquest of the Roman provinces in Africa by the Vandals in the 5th century. Power in the region would return the following century to the Byzantine Empire.
Muslim Arabs conquered North Africa from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and continued into Spain, beginning with the invasion of Egypt in the seventh century. Throughout North Africa Christianity virtually disappeared, except in Egypt where the Coptic Church remained strong, partly due to Ethiopian influence. Some argue that when the Arabs had converted Egypt they tried to wipe out the Copts, but Ethiopia—where this religion was also practiced—warned Muslims that if they tried to wipe out the Copts, they would slow down the flow of the Nile to Egypt.. This was because Lake Tana was the source of the Blue Nile, which flows into the main stream of the Nile. Some believe this is one of the reasons why Coptic minorities still exist today.
This
Around 3000 B.C. C. agriculture arose independently in Ethiopia, with crops such as coffee, teff, finger millet, sorghum, barley and enset. Donkeys were also domesticated independently in the Ethiopian and Somali region, but most domesticated animals arrived there from the Sahel and Nile regions. Some crops were also adopted from other regions around this time, including pearl millet, cowpeas, cotton, watermelon and gourd began to be cultivated both in West Africa and in the Sahel region, while finger millet, peas, lentils and flax established themselves in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia had a different ancient culture with an intermittent history of contact with Eurasia after the hominin diaspora out of Africa. It retained a unique language, culture, and farming system. The cultivation system was adapted to the northern mountainous areas and was not applied to any crops from other regions. The most famous member of this farming system was coffee, but one of the most useful plants was sorghum, a dryland cereal; teff was endemic to the region.
Ethiopia had had centralized rule for many millennia, and the Kingdom of Aksum, which developed there, had created a powerful trading empire—with trade routes reaching as far afield as India.
Historically, Swahili could be found as far north as Mogadishu in Somalia, and as far south as the Ruvuma River in Mozambique. Though once believed to be the descendants of Persian settlers, the ancient Swahili are now recognized by most historians, historical linguists, and archaeologists as a Bantu people who had significant interaction with Muslim merchants from the late seventh and early centuries. of the eighth century of our era.
West
The beginning of western Sahel agriculture dates back to 5000 BC. C. Although in the tropical area of West Africa the date of the beginning of agriculture is located around the year 3000 a. C., where oil palms began to be cultivated independently. African yams are also domesticated although cattle ranching spread there from the Sahel and Nile region. Crops from other regions were also adopted at this time, such as pearl millet, cowpeas, groundnuts, cotton, watermelon and gourd, beginning to be cultivated both in West Africa and in the Sahel.
Center
Around 1000 B.C. C., Bantu emigrants had reached the Great Lakes region of eastern Africa. By the middle of that millennium, the Bantu had also settled in regions where countries such as Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are today. One of the major events in central Africa during this period was the establishment of the Kanem-Bornu Empire in present-day Chad. The Kanem Empire would flourish in the following centuries, laying the foundations for the rise of future great states in the Sahel region.
South
The history of southern Africa remains largely a mystery, due to its isolation from other cultures on the continent. In the year 500 B.C. C. that isolation came to an end with the settlement of Bantu emigrants in present-day Zambia. To the southeast, the Khoisan, also known as the Bushmen, began domesticating cattle and changing from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that had dominated the region since the dawn of time. For the year 300 a. C., the Bantu had reached the current territory of South Africa, serving as the basis for the appearance of centralized states.
Protohistory
Since before the 1st millennium BCE. C. had begun in central Africa, an important Bantu expansion, probably associated with the expansion of certain crops, which profoundly altered the genetic and linguistic distribution of black Africa. Giving it a similar appearance to the current one, where there is an ocean of peoples who speak Nigerian-Congolese languages, leaving marginal populations that either speak languages not related to Bantu (Khoisan, Sandawe, Hadza) or have genetic markers quite different from the common Bantu. (for example, the pygmies).
The expansion of the Bantu would continue during the first centuries of our era until even after the arrival of European explorers culminating in the formation of the Zulu kingdom in Southern Africa
7th to 16th centuries
In the 7th century there was considerable Arab immigration, resulting in a great absorption of Berber culture. Even before this the Berbers had generally adopted the language and religion of their conquerors. The Arab influence and the Islamic religion became indelibly attached to North Africa. Together they spread south across the Sahara. They also established themselves firmly along the eastern coast, where Arabs, Persians, and Indians established flourishing colonies, such as Mombasa, Malindi, and Sofala, exerting an influence analogous to that exercised in previous centuries by the Carthaginians on the northern coast.. Until the 14th century, Europe and the Arabs in North Africa were unaware of the existence of these eastern cities and states.
Early Arab immigrants had recognized the authority of the caliphs of Baghdad, and the Aghlabid dynasty—founded by Aglab, one of Haroun al-Rashid's generals, in the late eighth century—reigned as a vassal of the caliphate. However, at the beginning of the 10th century the Fatimid dynasty established itself in Egypt where Cairo had been founded in 968, and from there ruled as far away as the Atlantic coast. Later, other dynasties such as the Almoravid and the Almohad would emerge. Eventually the Turks, who had conquered Constantinople in 1453 and captured Egypt in 1517, established the regencies of Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli (between 1519 and 1551), with Morocco remaining an independent Arabized Berber state under the rule of the Sharifan dynasty, the which arose at the end of the 13th century.
Under the rule of previous dynasties, Arab culture had reached a high degree of excellence, while the proselytizing of followers of Islam led to a considerable spread of this religion on the continent. This was more easily accomplished by the use of the camel (originally introduced to Africa by the Persian conquerors of Egypt), which enabled the Arabs to traverse the desert. In this way the regions of Senegambia and central Niger became key areas for trans-Saharan trade and the exchange of ideas.
Expansion of Islam
Islam also spread throughout the West African interior, as the religion of the Mansas of the Mali Empire (1235-1400) and many rulers of the Songhay Empire (1460-1591). After Mansa Musa's legendary hajj of 1324, Timbuktu became famous as a center of Islamic learning with the first university in sub-Saharan Africa. The city had been visited in 1352 by the great Arab traveler Ibn Battuta, whose journey to Mombasa and Quiloa (Kilwa) provided the first accurate insights into those flourishing Muslim Swahili cities on the eastern African coasts.
The Arab advance south was halted by the wide belt of dense jungle, stretching almost the full width of the continent approximately south of 10° N latitude, and it blocked their advance just as the Sahara had done with their predecessors. The jungle prevented them from learning of the existence of the Guinea coast and the rest of Africa that lay beyond. One of the last regions to fall under Arab control was Nubia, which had been dominated by Christians until the 14th century.
For a time Muslim conquests in southern Europe virtually turned the Mediterranean into a Muslim lake, but the 11th-century expulsion of the Saracens from Sicily and southern Italy by the Normans was followed by descendants of the conquerors of Tunis and Tripoli. A little later a strong trade with the African coasts, and especially with Egypt, developed with Venice, Pisa, Genoa and other cities in northern Italy. By the end of the 15th century, Spain had completely driven out the Muslims, but even by the time the Moors were still in Granada, Portugal had been strong enough to take the war to Africa. In 1415 a Portuguese army captured the citadel of Ceuta on the Moorish coast. Thereafter Portugal repeatedly interfered in Moroccan affairs, while Spain acquired many ports in Algeria and Tunisia.
Portugal, however, suffered a crushing defeat in 1578 at Alcazarquivir, the Moors being commanded by Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik I Saadi of the then newly established Saadi Dynasty. By then the Spanish had lost almost all of their African possessions. The Barbary states, primarily after the example of the Moors expelled from Spain, degenerated into mere communities of pirates, and under Turkish influence civilization and commerce declined. The history of these states from the beginning of the 16th century to the third decade of the 19th century is largely made up of pirate exploits on the one hand and futile reprisals on the other.
Kingdoms of the Sahel
The trade in gold and other raw materials led to the formation of aristocracies in the Sahel region, in which a sovereign centralized trade with the north coast of Africa. Among these empires were the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, the Songhay Empire, the Kanem-Bornu Empire or the Wadai Empire.
Great Lakes Region
In the Great Lakes region from the 15th century arose well-organized and centralized kingdoms such as Bunyoro, Budanda, Rwanda and Burundi. The emergence of these kingdoms owed much to the beginning of the use of iron in the region and to new crops such as bananas. Both innovations allowed an improvement in agricultural yields that led to a significant increase in population density.
European intervention and invasion
European Exploration
During the 15th century Henry the Navigator, son of King John I of Portugal, planned to acquire African territory for Portugal. Under his inspiration and direction some Portuguese navigators undertook a series of voyages of exploration that resulted in the circumnavigation of Africa and the establishment of Portuguese sovereignty over a large number of coastal areas.
Portuguese ships rounded Cape Bojador in 1434, Cape Verde in 1445, and by 1480 the entire Guinea coast was known to the Portuguese. In 1482, Diogo Cão reached the mouth of the Congo, the Cape of Good Hope was surrounded by Bartolomé Díaz in 1488, and in 1498 Vasco da Gama, after having rounded that cape, explored the eastern coast, landing at Sofala and Malindi, and from there he went to India. Portugal declared its sovereignty at every point where its navigators landed, but this was not exercised in the extreme south of the continent.
The coast of Guinea, being the closest to Europe, was the first to be exploited. Numerous European forts and trading establishments were founded, the first being São Jorge da Mina (Elmina), established in 1482. The main commodities traded were slaves, gold, ivory, and spices. The European discovery of the Americas (1492) was followed by a great development of the slave trade, which, before the Portuguese era, had been an overland trade confined almost exclusively to Muslim Africa. The lucrative nature of this trade and the large amounts of alluvial gold obtained by the Portuguese attracted other nations to the Guinean coast. English navigators arrived in 1553, and were followed by the Spanish, Dutch, French, and Danish, among others. Colonial supremacy along the coast passed in the 17th century from Portugal to the Netherlands and from the Dutch in the 18th and 19th centuries to France and the United Kingdom. The entire coast from Senegal to Lagos was endowed with forts and "factories" of the European powers, and this international landscape persisted into the 20th century even though all the hinterlands of West Africa had become French or British territory.
South of the mouth of the Congo in the Damaraland region (in present-day Namibia), the Portuguese gained influence over the natives from 1491 onwards, and in the early 16th century through their efforts Christianity was adopted in much of the Kingdom of the Congo. An incursion of tribes from the interior later in the century ended the power of the semi-Christian state, and Portuguese activity was largely transferred to the south, founding São Paulo de Loanda (now Luanda) in 1576. Before independence of Angola in 1975, Portugal's sovereignty over this coastal region, except at the mouth of the Congo, had only been challenged by one European power, the Dutch, from 1640 to 1648 when Portugal lost control of the seaports.
Trafficking of enslaved people
The oldest external African slave trade was trans-Saharan. Although some trafficking had occurred along the Nile and very little through the Western Desert long ago, transporting large numbers of enslaved people was not feasible until camels were introduced from Arabia in the 10th century. point, a trans-Saharan trading network was established to transport enslaved people north. Unlike in the Americas, enslaved people in North Africa were mainly servants rather than laborers, and an equal or greater number of women were taken than men, who were often employed as waitresses for the women in the harems.. It was also not uncommon to make eunuchs of enslaved males.
The cross-Atlantic slave trade developed later, but would end up becoming much larger and having a much greater impact. The increasing penetration of the Americas by the Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch, among others, led to an enormous demand for labor in Brazil, Guyenne, the Caribbean, and North America. Workers were required for agriculture, mining, and other tasks. To meet this demand, a transatlantic traffic of enslaved people developed. These people from those regions of West Africa known to Europeans as the Slave Coast, the Gold Coast, and the Ivory Coast were often the unfortunate products of fighting between enemy African states. The powerful African kings of the Biafra Bay could sell their prisoners internally or trade them with European slave traders for goods such as firearms, rum, cloth, and seeds. Notably, European traders also conducted their own slave hunts.
European explorers of the 19th century
Although the Napoleonic Wars distracted Europe from exploring Africa, there were significant developments. The invasion of Egypt (1798-1803) first by France and then by Britain resulted in an attempt by Turkey to regain direct control over that country, followed in 1811 by the establishment under Mehmet Ali of a quasi-state. independence, and the extension of Egyptian rule over eastern Sudan (from 1820 onwards). In southern Africa the fight against Napoleon led the United Kingdom to seize Dutch settlements on the Cape, and in 1814 the Cape Colony, which had been continuously occupied by British troops since 1806, was formally ceded to the British crown.
By the mid-19th century, Protestant missions carried out missionary activities on the Guinea coast, in South Africa and in the Zanzibar domains. They were held among people whom the Europeans knew little about. In many cases the missionaries became explorers or agents of trade and colonialism. One of the first to attempt to fill in the remaining blank spaces on the European map was David Livingstone, who had been involved in missionary labor north of the Orange since 1840. In 1849 Livingstone crossed the Kalahari desert from south to north and reached Lake Ngami, and between 1851 and 1856 he traversed the continent from west to east, revealing the great waterways of the upper Zambezi. During these voyages, Livingstone 'discovered', in November 1855, the famous Victoria Falls, named after Queen Victoria I of the United Kingdom. In Africa, this waterfall is called Mosi-oa-Tunya ("smoke that thunders"). Between 1858 and 1864 the lower Zambezi, the Shire River and Lake Nyasa were explored by Livingstone. A primary goal for explorers was to locate the source of the Nile. The expeditions of Burton and Speke (1857-1858) and Speke and Grant (1863) succeeded in locating Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria. Later it was shown that it was from the second lake from which the Nile was born.
Henry Morton Stanley, who in 1871 had succeeded in finding and succoring Livingstone, set out for Zanzibar in 1874, and in one of the most memorable of all exploratory expeditions in Africa circumnavigated Lakes Victoria and Lake Tanganyika, and, going farther to the Lualaba River, followed its course downstream to the Atlantic Ocean—where it arrived in August 1877—and proved that it was the Congo River.
The explorers were also active in other parts of the continent. Southern Morocco, the Sahara, and the Sudan were traversed in many directions between 1860 and 1875 by Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs, Georg August Schweinfurth, and Gustav Nachtigal. These travelers not only greatly increased geographic knowledge, but also gained invaluable information regarding the people, languages, and natural history of the countries they visited. Among Schweinfurth's discoveries was one that confirmed Greek legends about the existence beyond Egypt of a "pygmy race." But the first Westerner to discover the central African pygmies was Paul du Chaillu, who found them in the west coast district of Ogowe in 1865, five years before Schweinfurth's first encounter with them; du Chaillu had previously, as a result of his travels in the Gabon region between 1855 and 1859, made popular in Europe the knowledge of the existence of the gorilla, possibly the giant ape seen by Hanno the Navigator, and whose existence, until the middle of the century XIX, was conceived as legendary like that of Aristotle's pygmies.
Scramble for Africa and European invasion
While exploration of the most remote and inaccessible areas of the continent was in its infancy, exploration had already taken place in other parts of the continent, the most notable being the invasion of Algiers by France in 1830. This action put an end to the United States independent Berbers, a major obstacle to the French strategy in the Mediterranean. Egyptian authority continued its expansion to the south. Zanzibar City, on the island of the same name, quickly rose to prominence. Tales of a vast inland sea, and the "discovery" in 1840-1848, by the missionaries Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann, from Mount Kilimanjaro and Kenya, stimulated in Europe the desire for more knowledge.
Yet by the end of the 19th century, sub-Saharan Africa was one of the world's last largely Unaffected by 'informal imperialism,' it was also attractive to European powers for economic and racial reasons. During a time when Britain's trade balance was in growing deficit, with continental markets shrinking and increasingly protectionist due to the Great Depression between 1873 and 1896, Africa offered the United Kingdom, the German Empire, France, and other countries an open market from which a large surplus would be harvested: a market that bought more of the mother country than it sold in total. The UK, like most other industrial countries, had begun to have an unfavorable balance of trade (which was offset, however, by investment income from its colonies). These underlying reasons led to the Berlin conference where the main European empires would decide the division of Africa and the allocation of areas of influence that would lead to European colonialism at the end of the century XIX and the effective military subjugation of millions of Africans.
Decolonization and Independence
The decolonization of Africa refers to the independence processes that occurred in the continent after the end of World War II. It started with Libya in 1951, even though Liberia, South Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia were already independent. It was followed by Sudan and Tunisia in 1956, Ghana in 1957 and Guinea in 1958, and with a peak in 1960, with the so-called Year of Africa, where 17 African countries declared independence, including much of Africa. French West. Most of the other countries became independent during the 1960s, although some colonizers, such as Portugal, were reluctant to give up sovereignty, resulting in bitter wars of independence that lasted for a decade or more. The last African countries to achieve formal independence were Angola from Portugal in 1975, Seychelles from the United Kingdom in 1976, and Djibouti from France in 1977. Because many cities were founded, expanded, and renamed by Europeans, after independence a many places were renamed.
Since the end of the Cold War, three states have seceded and achieved their independence from other African republics. Namibia gained independence from South Africa in 1990, Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1993, and South Sudan from the Republic of Sudan in 2011.
Postcolonial Africa
Today, Africa contains 54 sovereign countries, most of which have borders that were drawn during the era of European colonialism. Since colonialism, African states have often been hampered by instability, corruption, violence and authoritarianism. The vast majority of African states are republics operating under some form of presidential system of government. However, few of them have been able to sustain democratic governments on a permanent basis, and many have instead cycled through a series of coups, producing military dictatorships. As contrasting examples, one can take Botswana, which since its independence in 1966 has maintained a strong tradition of stable representative democracies, with consistent uninterrupted election records and the lowest perceived corruption in Africa, while at the other extreme is Somalia, a country which has suffered from a civil war since 1991, between various sides that have declared regional autonomy without a state government being able to reverse it. These regional autonomies are not recognized internationally, and have led to Somalia being considered a failed state.
Great instability was primarily the result of the marginalization of ethnic groups, and engraftment under these leaders. For political reasons, many leaders opened ethnic conflicts, some of which were exacerbated, or even created, by colonial rule. In many countries, the military was perceived as the only group that could effectively maintain order, and it ruled many nations in Africa during the 1970s and early 1980s. During the period from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, Africa had more than 70 coups and 13 presidential assassinations. Border and territorial disputes were also common, with the European-imposed borders of many nations being widely contested through armed conflict.
The Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as the policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also played a role in the instability. When a country first became independent, it was expected to align itself with one of the two superpowers. Many North African countries received Soviet military aid, while others in central and southern Africa received support from the United States, France, or both. The 1970s saw an escalation of Cold War conflicts, as newly independent Angola and Mozambique aligned with the Soviet Union, and West Africa and South Africa tried to contain Soviet influence by supporting friendly regimes or insurgent movements. In Rhodesia, the Soviet- and Chinese-backed leftist guerillas of the Zimbabwe Patriotic Front waged a brutal guerrilla war against the country's white government. There was a great famine in Ethiopia, when hundreds of thousands of people died of starvation. Some claimed that Marxist economic policies made the situation worse. The most devastating military conflict in modern independent Africa has been the Second Congo War; this conflict and its aftermath have caused the deaths of some 5.5 million people. Since 2003 there has been a Darfur Conflict that has turned into a humanitarian disaster. Another notable tragic event is the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed. AIDS in post-colonial Africa has also been a frequent issue.
In the 21st century, however, the number of armed conflicts in Africa has steadily decreased. For example, Angola's civil war came to an end in 2002 after nearly 30 years. This has coincided with many countries abandoning communist-style command economies and opening up to market reforms. Improved stability and economic reforms have led to a large increase in foreign investment in many African nations, mainly from China, fueling rapid economic growth in many countries, halting decades of stagnation and decline. Several African economies are among the fastest growing in the world as of 2016. A significant part of this growth, which is sometimes referred to as Africa Rising, can also be attributed to the facilitated diffusion of information technologies. information and specifically the mobile phone.
On the other hand, the emergence of the Arab Spring and associated conflicts, added to the insurgency of the Islamic State and movements that support it such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, have generated new outbreaks of violence in the north and west of Africa during the 2010s.
Modern armed conflicts
North Africa
- Ifni War (1957 - 1958)
- War of the Arenas (1963)
- Western Sahara War (1975 - 1991)
- Libyan-Egyptian War (1977)
- Wars in Chad
- Chadian Civil War (1965-1979)
- Chadian Civil War (1979 - 1982)
- Chadian Civil War (2005 - 2010)
- Insurgency in northern Chad (2016 - current)
- Conflict between Chad and Libya (1978 - 1987)
- Algerian Civil War (1991 - 2002)
- Insurgency in the Maghreb (2002 - present)
- Tunisian Revolution (2010 - 2011)
- Wars of Sudan and South Sudan
- First Sudanese Civil War (1955 - 1972)
- Sudan Civil War II (1983 - 2005)
- Insurgency of the Lord's Resistance Army (1987 - present)
- Darfur Conflict (current 2003)
- Sudanese tribal conflicts (2009 - present)
- South Sudanese Civil War (2013 - 2020)
- Wars of Libya
- 2011 Libyan War
- Military violence in Libya (2011-2014)
- Second Libyan Civil War
Horn of Africa
- Eritrean civil war (1972 - 1981)
- Ethiopian Civil War (1974 - 1991)
- Ogaden War (1977 - 1978)
- Somali Revolution (1986-1992)
- Civil War of Djibouti (1991-1994)
- Somali civil war (1991 - present)
- Hanish Islands Crisis (1995)
- War between Ethiopia and Eritrea (1998 - 2000)
- Border conflict between Djibouti and Eritrea (2008)
Great Lakes
- Russian Civil War (and Rwandan Genocide) (1990 - 1994)
- Civil War of Burundi (1993 - 2006)
- Burundi crisis of 2015
- Uganda-Tanzania War (1978 - 1979)
- Ugandan Civil War (1981 - 1986)
- Shifta War (1963 - 1967)
- Crisis in Kenya (2007-2008)
West Africa
- War of the Agacher Strip (1974 - 1985)
- Islamist insurgency in Nigeria (2002 - present)
- First Civil War of Ivory Coast (2002 - 2007)
- Second Civil War of Ivory Coast (2010 - 2011)
- Conflict of Casamanza (2005 - 2014)
- Guinea-Bissau Civil War (1998-1999)
- First Liberian Civil War (1988 - 1996)
- Second Liberian Civil War (1999 - 2003)
- Tuareg Rebellion (1990-1996)
- Tuareg rebellion (2007-2009)
- 2012 Tuareg Rebellion
- Conflict in northern Mali (2012-2013)
- Nigerian Civil War (1967 - 1970)
- Niger Delta Conflict (1992 - present)
- Sierra Leone Civil War (1991 - 2002)
Central Africa
- First Central African Civil War (2004-2007)
- Central African Civil War II (2012-2014)
- Conflicts in the Congo
- Congo crisis (1960 - 1966)
- Simba Rebellion (1964)
- First Shaba War (1977)
- Second Shaba War (1978)
- Insurgency of the Allied Democratic Forces (1995 - present)
- First Congo War (1996-1997)
- Civil War of the Republic of the Congo (1997-1999)
- Second Congo War (1998 - 2003)
- Congolese genocide
- Ituri Conflict (1999 - 2003)
- Kivu War (2004 - 2009)
- Eastern Congo Conflict 2012-2013
South Africa
- Sharpeville Matanza (1960)
- Rodesia Civil War (1964 - 1979)
- South African Border War (1966 - 1988)
- Soweto Disturbing (1976)
- Angolan Civil War (1975 - 2002)
- Mozambique Civil War (1977-1992)
- Operation Boleas (1998)
Insular Africa
- 2008 Anjouan Invasion
Contenido relacionado
Ounce (unit of mass)
Niger
Guipuzcoa